Kicking out the cranks won’t save Labour

There is a problem with Sir Keir Starmer’s reported plan to expel 1,000 Labour members associated with ‘poisonous’ groups, and not just that there are way more than a thousand poisonous people in the Labour party. The problem – and it’s a common error – is that Sir Keir exaggerates the role played by the far-left in bringing Labour to the point where it has lost four general elections in a row and last led the Tories in a poll almost six months ago. The cranks became more visible after Ed Miliband’s election as leader, more numerous thanks to his three-quid revolution and more powerful when that policy put Jeremy Corbyn in charge, but they alone are not to blame for the party’s current malaise.

Note the division of labour: the cranks do the crankery and the soft-left does the enabling. The far-left recruited legions of banal fanatics into the Labour party, but the soft-left held open the door for them.